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2010 FIFA World Cup
The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010. The bidding process for hosting the tournament finals was open only to African nations; in 2004, the international football federation, FIFA, selected South Africa over Egypt and Morocco to become the first African nation to host the finals. The matches were played in 10 stadiums in nine host cities around the country, with the final played at the Soccer City stadium in South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg. Thirty-two teams were selected for participation via a worldwide qualification tournament that began in August 2007. In the first round of the tournament finals, the teams competed in round-robin groups of four teams for points, with the top two teams in each group proceeding. These sixteen teams advanced to the knockout stage, where three rounds of play decided which teams would participate in the final. Host Selection Africa was chosen as the host for the 2010 FIFA World Cup as part of short-lived rotation policy, abandoned in 2007. On 7 July 2001, during the FIFA Congress at Buenos Aires, a decision was ratified where it will start from Africa and ending at South America. On 23 September 2002, FIFA had confirmed that only African member associations would be invited to submit bids for 2010 FIFA World Cup. In January 2003, Nigeria had entered their process but abandoned in September. Nigeria had originally wanted to bid with Benin, Ghana and Togo. After it was confirmed by FIFA that joint bidding would not be allowed in future, Libya and Tunisia both withdrew their bids in 8 May 2004. On 15 May 2004, South Africa had won the bid. Qualification Slovakia was making the first appearance as the individual nation rather than previously been represented by Czechoslovakia team that had last played in the 1990 tournament. North Korea had qualified for the first time since 1966, whereas Honduras and New Zealand were making first appearances since 1982 and Algeria were at the finals at the time of 1986 qualification. Teams that failed to qualify for this tournament included Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Croatia, all of whom had qualified for the previous three finals; Sweden, Poland, and Ecuador, who had qualified for the previous two editions; and Euro 2008 semi-finalists Russia and Turkey. Slovakia is also ranked 34, but the lowest is the South Africa who had ranked 83 and North Korea who had ranked 105. 45 Asian Football Confederation teams competed for sports in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Laos, Brunei and Philippines did not enter qualification, but this is the first time Timor-Leste competed in the World Cup qualification and this is the first time Australia attempted to qualify as a member of AFC, having been moved from the OFC in 2006. Four automatic qualifying berths were taken by Australia, Japan, North Korea and South Korea. Group Stage The first round, or group stage, saw the thirty-two teams divided into eight groups of four teams. Each group was a round-robin of six games, where each team played one match against each of the other teams in the same group. Teams were awarded three points for a win, one point for a draw and none for a defeat. The teams finishing first and second in each group qualified for the Round of 16. The South American teams performed strongly, with all five advancing to the knockout stages (four as group winners) and four made it to the quarter-finals (the only team from South America to not make it this far was Chile, who lost to Brazil) but Uruguay advanced to the semi-finals. The overall performance of African teams on the first occasion that the continent hosted the event was judged disappointing by observers. Of the six African nations only three won any matches (Ghana, South Africa and Ivory Coast), and only one (Ghana) progressed out of the first round. South Africa became the first host in FIFA World Cup history to not make it out of the group stage, finishing third in Group A behind Uruguay and Mexico, but ahead of France. Only six out of the 13 UEFA teams progressed to the last 16, a record low since the round of 16 adopted in 1986. Still a final is played along the European teams. Both of the finalists from the preceding tournament, winners Italy and France, were all eliminated in the competition, the first time this has happened in the FIFA World Cup. It was also the third time that the reigning champions were eliminated in the first round of finals (after Brazil in 1966 and France in 2002). Surprisingly, New Zealand, a team projected by many not to attain even one point in Group F, ended the tournament as the only undefeated team after drawing their three group matches, but they finished behind Paraguay and Slovakia and were eliminated. Knockout stage The knockout stage comprised the 16 teams that advanced from the group stage of the tournament. There were four rounds of matches, with each round eliminating half of the teams entering that round. The successive rounds were the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, and the final. There was also a play-off to decide third and fourth place. For each game in the knockout stage, any draw at 90 minutes was followed by thirty minutes of extra time; if scores were still level, there was a penalty shootout to determine who progressed to the next round. At the round of 16, several teams played as follows: *AFC: South Korea, Japan *CAF: Ghana *CONCACAF: United States, Mexico *CONMEBOL: Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay *UEFA: Netherlands, Slovakia, Germany, England, Spain, Portugal Teams advancing to the quarter-finals include Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. Ghana defeated the United States, and is the only one to advance to the quarter-finals (after Camerooon in 1998 and Senegal in 2002). England's 4–1 loss to Germany was their biggest ever margin of defeat at a World Cup finals. It was also the first time that a World Cup finals match between these two traditional rivals had a decisive result in regulation time, their three previous meetings all being tied at 90 minutes, with two settled in extra time and two in penalty shootout. Paraguay and Ghana reached the quarter-finals at that time. The round was marked by controversial referees' decisions, including: *The disallowed goal by England in their 4-1 loss against Germany, where the shot by Frank Lampard was seen to cross substantially over the goal line when shown on television broadcast replays. *The allowed goal by Argentina in their 3-1 win over Mexico, where Argentine striker Carlos Tevez was seen to be outside when shown on television broadcast replays, which were shown in the stadium shortly after the incident. FIFA President Sepp Blatter took the unusual step of apologising to England and Mexico for the decisions that went against them, saying: "Yesterday I spoke to the two federations directly concerned by referees' mistakes ... I apologised to England and Mexico. The English said thank you and accepted that you can win some and the Mexicans bowed their head and accepted it". Blatter's call came less than four months after FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke said that the door was closed in goal-line technology and video replays after a vote by a IFDB. The three quarter-finals between European and South American teams all resulted in a wins by the Europeans. Germany had a 4-0 win victory against Argentina and the Netherlands came to beat Brazil in 2-1, handing the Brazilians their first loss in a world cup match outside Europe (other than in penalty shootout) since 1950 when the Uruguay had a decisive match of 2-1. Spain reached the final four of the first time since 1950 after a 1-0 win against Paraguay. Uruguay, the only South American team to reach the semi-finals, overcame Ghana in a penalty shootout after 1-1 draw of which Ghana missed a penalty at the end of the extra time where Luis Suarez controversially handled the ball for the first time. The Netherlands qualified for a final in the third time after a 3-2 win against Uruguay. Spain reached the first ever final with a 1-0 victory over Germany. It was the first World Cup final not to feature of any Brazil, Italy, Germany or Argentina. Germany defeated Uruguay 3-2 to secure a place. It was the second time Germany had went to third place playoff since 2006. Germany holds the record of third place finishes in the World Cup (4), while Uruguay holds the record for the most fourth-place finishes (3). Final Prior to this game, the Netherlands and Spain had not met each other in the main tournamemnt stages of either the World Cup or the European Championship, the two major tournaments in the European national football teams. In all time head-to-head results, the teams had met nine times previously since 1920, winning four games each and drawing once, in either friendlies, European Championship qualifying games, and once in the 1920 Summer Olympics. It was the first time since the 1978 final that neither the finalists had won the World Cup. The Netherlands were runners-up twice before, losing 2–1 to West Germany in 1974, and 3–1 (after extra time) to Argentina in 1978. Reaching the 2010 final was Spain's best performance in the World Cup, having previously finished fourth in 1950 when the tournament had a round-robin final stage, and the quarter-finals stage in 1934, 1986, 1994 and 2002, when single elimination knock-out stages featured. Spain became the 12th different country to play in a World Cup Final, and first new team since France in 1998. The Netherlands played in its third final without a win, surpassing the record it had shared with Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Overall, Germany leads with four final losses. Spain became the eighth country to win the World Cup, joining England and France as one of the nations at once. Spain had Elo rating of 2111 points, whereas Netherlands had Elo rating of 2100 points. In the final, Spain, the European champions, defeated third-time finalists Netherlands 1–0 after extra time, with Andrés Iniesta's goal in the 116th minute giving Spain their first world title, becoming the eighth nation to win the tournament, and the first European nation to win the tournament outside its home continent. Host nation South Africa, 2006 champions Italy and France were all eliminated in the first round of the tournament. It was the first time that the hosts were eliminated in the first round. New Zealand with their three draws were the only undefeated team in the tournament, but were also eliminated in the first round. As such, it was the first World Cup final not to feature the likes of Brazil, Italy, Germany and Argentina. This result marked the first time that two different teams from the same continent had won successive World Cups (following Italy in 2006), and saw Europe reaching 10 World Cup titles, surpassing South America's nine titles. Spain became the first team since West Germany in 1974 to win the World Cup as European champions. The result also marked the first time that a European nation had won a World Cup Finals that was not hosted on European soil. Spain entered the 2010 World Cup as the reigning UEFA European Football Champions, having won UEFA Euro 2008, and as the shared holders of the international football record of consecutive unbeaten games for a national team, spanning 35 matches from 2007 to 2009; they also won all 10 matches of their qualifying campaign. The Netherlands also entered the World Cup having won all the eight measures in their UEFA Group 9 campaign. Once at the finals, the Netherlands reached the knockout stage as winners of Group E, with three wins out of three against Denmark, Japan and Cameroon, conceding only one goal. In the knockout stage, they beat World Cup debutants Slovakia, five-time champions Brazil and two-time champions Uruguay. The Netherlands reached the Final in a 25-match unbeaten streak since September 2008.